Tagged: climate change

NZ introduces groundbreaking zero carbon bill, including targets for agricultural methane - Planetary Ecology

Robert McLachlan • May 09, 2019 •

• agricultural emissions,
• climate change,
• greenhouse gas emissions,
• Paris Agreement,
• Zero Carbon Bill

New Zealand’s long-awaited zero carbon bill will create sweeping changes to the management of emissions, setting a global benchmark with ambitious reduction targets for all major greenhouse gases. The bill includes two separate targets – one for the long-lived greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide, and another target specifically for biogenic methane, produced by livestock and landfill waste. Read More

Lessons from Canada for NZ: Carbon, Cycling, Tobacco, Nutrition and Cannabis - Public Health Expert

Public Health Expert • Apr 08, 2019 •

• climate change,
• cycling,
• food marketing,
• healthy food guidelines,
• Public Health,
• tobacco control,
• Transport

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amanda Jones, A/Prof George Thomson Canada has a number of progressive public policies which can influence health. In this blog we briefly look at 6 potential lessons for NZ in the domains of: (i) responding to climate change; (ii) supporting cycling; (iii) tobacco control; (iv) controls on food marketing directed at children; (v) healthy food … Read More

Farms, forests, and fossil fuels - Planetary Ecology

Robert McLachlan • Mar 28, 2019 •

• climate change,
• greenhouse gas emissions,
• James Shaw,
• Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment,
• Simon Upton

That’s the title of the new report from Simon Upton, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. In a pattern we’ve become used to, James Shaw, Minister for Climate Change, immediately released a statement to say that the report’s main recommendation – that forests not be allowed to offset fossil emissions – was not on the table. But the same day … Read More

SS4C – school strike 4 climate - BioBlog

Alison Campbell • Feb 28, 2019 •

• climate change,
• environmetal activism,
• Science

The news that school students from across New Zealand are organising the School Strike for Climate on March 15 has been all over the media lately. See this story, for example, which includes the comment that: Globally, their message is clear. They are sick of waiting for adults to save their world so they are going to do … Read More

Civilization VI: Gathering Storm shows video games can make us think seriously about climate change - Guest Work

Guest Author • Feb 18, 2019 •

• climate change,
• video games

Noam Obermeister, University of Cambridge and Elliot Honeybun-Arnolda, University of East Anglia A new expansion has added environmental challenges to Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, the latest in a popular series of strategy video games that has been running since the 1990s. The expansion – called Gathering Storm – adds new features to the game, most … Read More

Ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica predicted to bring more frequent extreme weather - Guest Work

Guest Author • Feb 07, 2019 •

• Antarctica,
• climate change,
• Greenland,
• ice sheets,
• sea level rise

Nick Golledge, Victoria University of Wellington Last week, rivers froze over in Chicago when it got colder than at the North Pole. At the same time, temperatures hit 47℃ in Adelaide during the peak of a heatwave. Such extreme and unpredictable weather is likely to get worse as ice sheets at both poles continue to melt. Our … Read More

Farmed fish dying, grape harvest weeks early – just some of the effects of last summer’s heatwave in NZ - Guest Work

Guest Author • Jan 30, 2019 •

• climate change,
• marine heatwave,
• summer temperatures

Jim Salinger, University of Tasmania and James Renwick, Victoria University of Wellington As the Australian heatwave is spilling across the Tasman and pushing up temperatures in New Zealand, we take a look at the conditions that caused a similar event last year and the impacts it had. Last summer’s heatwave gave New Zealand its warmest … Read More

Ocean acidification may have unexpected impacts - BioBlog

Alison Campbell • Jan 20, 2019 •

• Carbon dioxide,
• climate change,
• ocean acidification,
• shellfish

A substantial proportion of the CO2 we release into the atmosphere, via burning fossil fuels, ends up dissolved in the ocean. The impact of this is a change in the ocean’s acidity: the pH drops. According to the Smithsonian, oceans have become substantially more acidic over the last 200 years (the period of the Industrial Revolution) – waaaay … Read More

Why you shouldn’t eat beef - Physics Stop

Marcus Wilson • Jan 11, 2019 •

• beef,
• Carbon dioxide,
• climate change,
• Diet,
• emissions,
• meat

“Don’t eat beef.” Such a statement does not go down well in New Zealand,  especially in Waikato, where the cow reigns supreme. I don’t say it as someone who wants to peddle a “Meat is Murder” message. I don’t believe that at all. I say it as someone who wants New Zealand to take Climate Change seriously. Quite simply, producing … Read More

What’s your beef? How ‘carbon labels’ can steer us towards environmentally friendly food choices - Guest Work

Guest Author • Dec 18, 2018 •

• beef,
• climate change,
• Diet,
• emissions

Adrian R. Camilleri, University of Technology Sydney; Dalia Patino-Echeverri, Duke University, and Rick Larrick, Duke University What did you have for dinner last night? Might you have made a different choice if you had a simple way to compare the environmental impacts of different foods? Most people do not recognise the environmental impact of … Read More